Marketers across the globe have one goal in common, and that is to let people know about their brand, far and wide. They hope for their contents to go viral and leverage their reputation.
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How to Use Viral Marketing for Brand Engagement?
Years ago, viral marketing started as a fancy buzzword for a capricious internet meme that eventually grows into a sought-after strategy. But that doesn’t mean it’s old news.
As a business owner or marketer, you’re very familiar with the idea of “going viral” and would love to take advantage of it for your marketing campaigns. The only problem is that there are too many misinterpretations about what it takes to do so.
It’s always easy to say that something will go viral than to see it go viral. Marketers need to utilize social channels to deliver their brand’s messages to people, but making these messages viral is entirely different.
What’s Viral Marketing By the Way?
Viral marketing, by definition, is any strategy that motivates individuals to relay a marketing message to others which create a potential for exponential growth in the influence and exposure of the message. Such strategies take advantage of the fast multiplication of different platforms to explode the message to thousands and even millions, hence, making it viral.
Outside the internet, viral marketing got recognized as “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “word-of-mouth,” and “network marketing.”
This marketing approach uses text messaging, videos, social media and other person-to-person methods to proliferate information about their product or service instead of just creating advertisements and distributing them on TV or radio. (contd.: How to Use Viral Marketing for Brand Engagement?)
Today, viral marketing is also utilizing the power of individuals who are sharing content to spread messages as quickly as possible and to as many people as possible.
What’sIn It For Your Brand
When something goes viral, it spreads rapidly and extensively from one person to another like wildfire.
With social media platforms like Facebook and Youtube, sharing stories, videos, and images to different crowds is possible in only a matter of seconds. It renders a robust way to share information in a very short period.
Online businesses can benefit the most from viral marketing, especially start-ups. It has something to do with the fact that people love to talk about the good experiences that they have and share them on social media.
It’s what creates excitement towards a product, service, or brand. If you want to leverage the marketing efforts of your business or practice, here are some tips to improve your Office phone calls.
On a note of caution, if the people’s experience is not good, it may bring the opposite effect. The hype will stop building and fizzles instead, both of which may result in the death of the business.
How Should You Do It?
Viral marketing is not an easy medium to maneuver, but it’s achievable. It may not be an end-all, be-all solution to going viral but it gives you knowledge of how your viral ad campaigns can help your brand.
There are five methods you can use to increase the chance of your brand going viral. Check them out below.
Use Social Media Insights to Your Advantage
You have to understand who the group is if you want to draw the attention of your target audience. Take a look at the following social media analytics:
- Keyword performance and traffic
- Audience engagement
- Page impressions
- Trending hashtags
- Demographics
- Clicks and reach
- Social interactions
Each of these metrics offers some insights about which content is the top performer on social channels. They also help you make a viral marketing campaign for social media that can be helpful for your brand. For example, you can create marketing videos for YouTube.
Find Out Why You Want Your Brand to Go Viral
One of the biggest mistakes that businesses tend to do is not realizing why they want to be in the frontline of people’s news feeds or why they want to go viral.
You need to create an action plan for the content to inject some purpose into it. Most marketers think that viral content must catch on, no matter what, and this is where the problem starts because it could backfire.
For example, Mountain Dew Kickstart Puppy Monkey Baby was one of the most popular marketing campaigns that went viral. The commercial ad was a bizarre and weird mission which people recognized right away.
People are still wondering what Puppy Monkey Baby is all about even after it garner 23 million views on YouTube. But they know what Mt. Dew Kickstart means now.
Many assumed that the commercial would backfire, but Mt. Dew knows very well that creating something odd will make people wonder what in the world they were thinking which is exactly the sentiment that Mt. Dew wants to achieve.
Create Contents that People Will Share
This approach may seem repetitive and obvious, but you need to optimize your content to make people want to share it. Make sure the content is compelling, informative and shareable.
Encourage your audience to share your contents on social media to increase their chances of going viral. Your campaign will remain stagnant if you just keep it on your blog.
Instead of just keeping your contents on your blog, promote them on every social media channel. For example, if you have a picture for your content, use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat. You can use YouTube, Instagram or Vine if you have video contents for your campaign.
To make the sharing process easier, you can do the following:
- Ask strategic questions that will get your audience thinking.
- Offer different routes for your audience to share the content.
- Find out the motivations of your primary audience.
- Give free products or services and loyalty programs.
- Don’t limit the content.
Utilize Hashtags
A hashtag is a convenient tool that you can use to spread words about your content quickly. Take your cue from Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke hashtag strategy to inform people about their brand. The soft drink mogul used names on their bottles and cans so people can share a Coke with their family and friends.
According to the American Marketing Association, the campaign yields 28% more customers than the previous years. The #ShareaCoke hashtag campaign also pulled an impressive 250,000 times engagements from users when it’s still going on.
Make Your Contents Relatable
Brands have higher chances of acquiring more shares if they create content that comes across as human and genuine. According to Marketing Land, viral success is a little difficult to do, but if the message is sincere and authentic, the content can acquire more shares.
Further studies even show that creating more honest and genuine contents is a way to become a reliable brand. Marketers focus too much on Millennials, but this generation is not always easy to figure out.
Millennials love to experiment and they prefer to become members of immersive experience.
Hence, marketers should create engaging and compelling campaigns. In fact, the study conducted by Access reveals that 48 % of millennials expect brands to make customized offers that suit their needs while 39% are willing to go out of their way to avail a customized offer.
Engage With Your Audience (Always)
Marketers and businesses must take into consideration of how Millennials with customers on social media platforms, as one of the most important factors to keep in mind. The more communication that occurs between a business and its customers, the higher for the campaign to get engagements.
Companies can use various tools for social media engagement to help them keep in line with all the inbound messages that relate to their brand. Also, businesses can also take advantage of the message tagging features to identify if they are related to a certain campaign.
Takeaway:
To one degree or another, every successful strategy for viral marketing use the majority, if not, all of the five strategies above.
Trying to make your brand to go viral is a lot like trying to be famous. You can spend years and years of trying and never getting anywhere. Or you could do it in the right way, set realistic goals and focus on what matters.
While viral marketing established itself as an efficient avenue, it’s always best to create content that is shareable and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers. The better your content is, the more people will read it and the more likely they’ll patronize your brands.
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